TRENTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee today unanimously approved the governor’s appointment of Rochelle R. Hendricks to be the Secretary of Higher Education.

At the committee’s urging, Hendricks pledged to delve into why so many New Jersey students attend colleges outside the state, and why tuition costs have climbed so astronomically.

Hendricks also said she was fully behind Gov. Chris Christie’s "bold and transformative" plan to restructure New Jersey’s university system. The plan would reconfigure and rename the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, and allow Rowan University in Gloucester County to take over the Camden campus of Rutgers University, including its law school.

"The time has come – It’s an extraordinarily critical moment to do this. I hope we have the will to do so," she said.

Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), an opponent of the merger, asked Hendricks to consider allowing the legislature to have more of a say in shaping the plan. "The merger sells out UMDNJ in Newark,’’ and should include the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he said.

Nominated by the governor in May, Hendricks most recently served as the state’s acting deputy commissioner of education and previously served as acting education commissioner after Gov. Chris Christie fired Bret Schundler in August 2010 and before he hired acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf four months later.

The higher education secretary is a new post. In 1994, Former Gov. Christie Whitman abolished the position of higher education chancellor, calling it redundant because she said the responsibility for colleges should rest with the presidents and trustee boards of the individual institutions.

Before she was hired by the state education department in 1987, Hendricks, 64 of Fair Haven, spent 15 years at Princeton University as assistant dean of students, director of the Educational Opportunities Program, and interim director of the Women’s Program.